Change in our pricing

The company I work for and have done for a number of years, so don't really want to name names incase they read here!

We've all been on price on Redrow sites. The prices are £10 an hour, 12 hours for every 80ft, 4 hours a loading bay, half hour a standard on a birdcage. So basically they've called us into a meeting and said to secure more Redrow they have to drop their price and means we'll have a price rise on our flat rate but after we've earned over our 8 hours a day we go onto a fall back rate, so we got put on £10.50 and £6.60 fallback rate with the £10.50 all the way through on Saturday.

We had the meeting on a Wednesday informing us of the pay cut and they said they'd work out the rates of what they could pay and came back to us on Thursday night with the new rate and fallback and it would start from the following Monday. When we got paid on Friday we had been paid at the new rates when it should have kicked in the week later so we've basically been docked before we even agreed to it. Also now Redrow have added loads of little extras to our work that we won't get paid for because it's in our designs. 12 transoms on a loading bay with 4 rakers, when for the last 5 years it's been half that. Kicker lifts in the birdcages, flappering all the inside boards.

Just after a bit of advice really is all this even legal because we haven't actually signed anything agreeing to this new pricing and if there's anyway of making this more beneficial for us making almost the same money, I know we can hold hours back and go in on the Saturday for an hour and book them in at full rate but if someone comes to site on a Friday afternoon and sees its been done were ******, thanks for any input.

I'm really sorry to say this, but you have had it. Your company has a reasonable reason I doing what they are, like every other service industry, they are client driven. You can stamp your feet all you want, it's going to change nothing, unfortunately.

Sadly that is the way of business nowadays. Labour costs are around 40-70% of the job costings, depending on the way a company works. If your employers do not keep a grip on their outgoings they will close. House-building is the hardest work to make any profit but it is plentiful and will keep a company afloat. Your choice is to accept the reduced income, (perhaps increasing individual productivity will make up the shortfall) or find a better paying company. We have all been there sometime in the past - Good luck mate hope it works out for you.

Binthere said:

Sadly that is the way of business nowadays. Labour costs are around 40-70% of the job costings, depending on the way a company works. If your employers do not keep a grip on their outgoings they will close. House-building is the hardest work to make any profit but it is plentiful and will keep a company afloat. Your choice is to accept the reduced income, (perhaps increasing individual productivity will make up the shortfall) or find a better paying company. We have all been there sometime in the past - Good luck mate hope it works out for you.

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Binthere,
as always a man of much wisdom.

Binthere said:

Sadly that is the way of business nowadays. Labour costs are around 40-70% of the job costings, depending on the way a company works. If your employers do not keep a grip on their outgoings they will close. House-building is the hardest work to make any profit but it is plentiful and will keep a company afloat. Your choice is to accept the reduced income, (perhaps increasing individual productivity will make up the shortfall) or find a better paying company. We have all been there sometime in the past - Good luck mate hope it works out for you.

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Nice one mate, it's not too bad money wise still should pick up £550 after tax with a bit of fiddling by holding hours back everyday and going in on Saturday. it's just the principle of working harder an an extra day for less work, I guess it'll take a few weeks of getting used to. They threatened to take more men on to double the work force, that didn't make sense to me though because they could have just paid us 3/4 of what they'd pay out on extra men and still saved themselves money! Didn't make sense to me but that's bosses for you! I appreciate the reply anyway mate.

Welshjay said:

Nice one mate, it's not too bad money wise still should pick up £550 after tax with a bit of fiddling by holding hours back everyday and going in on Saturday. it's just the principle of working harder an an extra day for less work, I guess it'll take a few weeks of getting used to. They threatened to take more men on to double the work force, that didn't make sense to me though because they could have just paid us 3/4 of what they'd pay out on extra men and still saved themselves money! Didn't make sense to me but that's bosses for you! I appreciate the reply anyway mate.

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In theory, the more men you have, the thinner the fixed overheads of the company become as they get spread out per head. Obviously wages, and other variable costs go up with the increased work force numbers. You'll also collect more dead wood with in the work force as it expands, which can also have a negative effect, but like i say it does work in theory.